4 Field, Geoffrey G., Evangelist of Race.The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, New Yor ; 5 Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Munich, Bruckmann, 1899, ; 2 A passionate and self-educated man, Houston Stewart Chamberlain studied and read a lot, eager to explore many different fields at once: history, philosophy or the natural sciences. Houston Stewart Chamberlain was an Englishman who had married Richard Wagner's daughter. In these publications, Chamberlain emphasized the heroic Teutonic aspects in the composers works. Please, do not mention this painstaking compiler, good enough to write mediocre encyclopaedias named Plinius11. Houston Stewart Chamberlain died far too early to witness the rise of the NSDAP and the, of Germany under Nazi rule. In 1923, ten years before Adolf Hitler was appointed as Reich . "In this manner the ground was prepared for the emergence of a new race of'Supermen'," said Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Those three cities had been, throughout the 19th century, the epitome of Western culture: the Greeks had bequeathed philosophy and the arts, the Romans the Law and the Empire, and Jerusalem had opened a new path to salvation with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Counter-revolutionary theoreticians exalted in Germany the biological idea of the Volk and coined the word vlkisch as an alternative to the French adjective national. Lolita : Examining the Underside of the Weave, A digital resources portal for the humanities and social sciences, Catalogue of 609 journals. 29 Goebbels, Joseph, Das Tagebuch von Joseph Goebbels, 1925-1926, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1960, 141p., in the English translation: The Early Goebbels Diaries, 1925-1926, London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1962, 156p., p.77. And Chamberlain would not be the last to perform such a tour de force. Auswirkungen der Entjudaisierung Christi im 19. und zu Beginn des 20. This is one of the better clichs of the German historiography of the second half of the 19. century: only the Nordic king, Alexander of Macedonia, managed to unify Greece and put an end to endless campaigns by creating an Empire, like King Wilhelm of Prussia who succeeded in 1871 in unifying the different German tribes and states into a mighty Empire. Fenske, Wolfgang, Wie Jesus zum Arier wurde. copies. [11] Ulterior a devenit cetean german i ginere al lui Richard Wagner, dup ce s-a cstorit cu fiica acestuia, Eva von Blow. He also had quite a vast cultural knowledge for a self-made man. Being a Nazi in 1926 was just not the same than being a Nazi in 1938, 1942 or 1944. Feb by Claudio. and not just in Germany. Der Fanatiker erhitzt die Kpfe, Sie erwrmen die Herzen. idea ideal importance individual influence inner interest Italy Jewish Kant knowledge later less limited living material matter means mechanical merely mind moral mysticism nature never observation once original Paul personality philosophy political possess possible practical present principle proved purely . (1855-1927) Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Anglo-German race theorist and philosophical and . Regrettably, a number of Chamberlain's most important works are still accessible only to those who know German, the language in which he did In that respect, he is not being entirely fair to the author. He was, for the Germans, the thinker who popularized Gobineaus ideas on the social Darwinists, providing the German bourgeoisie with a sense of its mission: am deutschen wesen soll die welt genesenthe German essence must heal the world. Delenda est Carthago, but this time for gooda word to the wise for people who were sent fighting the new Carthage of Jewish bolshevism on the Eastern front. He reciprocated by paying a tribute to Chamberlain in Mein Kampf. But his several tracts written during World War I are interesting in their own right as documents of German nationalist . Later, the Wagner family would welcome another subject of the British Empire: Winifred Williams. We have to thank Rome () that it transferred the centre of gravity of civilization to the West and that the Jewish-Asian spell was broken, so that Germanic Europe became the beating heart and the thinking brain of whole mankind.14. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/6680; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.6680, Professor of History - Junior Member, Institut Universitaire de FranceSorbonne Nouvelle Universityjohann.chapoutot@univ-paris3.fr, Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/, Site map Legal information & Credits Links Directories and labels Syndication, OpenEdition member Published with Lodel Administration only, You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search, Expressions of Environment in Euroamerican Culture / Antique Bodies in Nineteenth Century British Literature and Culture, Antique Bodies in Nineteenth Century British Literature and Culture, From Humanism to Nazism: Antiquity in the Work of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a social Darwinist and a true racist. Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, Sehr geehrter und lieber Herr Hitler 7. An Anthology of Texts, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945. , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989. , Leipzig, 1869. Language. HomeIssues11Antique Bodies in Nineteenth CentPart I: Utopian BodiesTraining the Body: The Antique ModelFrom Humanism to Nazism: Antiquit Darwiniste social et raciste convaincu, Houston Stewart Chamberlain sest constitu une vaste culture dautodidacte. , Hamburg, Albrecht Knaus Verlag, 1980, 496p., p.96. geschrieben hat, ist gelinde gesagt dumm, Hitler quoted in Rauschning, Hermann. Hitler, Adolf, private talk from Oct. 21st, 1941, Fhrerhauptquartier, quoted in Hitler, Adolf, Den Jesus knnen Sie nicht zum Arier machen, das ist Unsinn. What can you say of a 1200 years long history that does not offer a single philosopher, not even the most modest one? Hitler wanted the support of someone whose work had become a canonical book for the racist nationalists in Germany. Chamberlain chose to revisit this holy triangle through the vlkisch perspective. Why was the world precisely how it should be (the white population thus rewarded for its supremacy over the others)? The main postulate was quite simple: everything in human history and culture could be explained by race, as Schemann would later emphasize in the three volumes of his, . Wagner, Richard, Das Judentum in der Musik, Leipzig, 1869. Chamberlain was brought up by relatives in France. Jahrhundert, auf welches wir jetzt () mit Stolz und zu Hoffnungen berechtigt zurckblicken, niemals erlebt, Ibid., p.161. Twisted Cross. They then left testimonies of their genius in immaculate and pristine temples that were currently used, in the 19th century, to demonstrate the superiority of white mankind. This would be taught in the ideological courses every member of the party (among which, members of the SS) had to take. For many people in the 19, : many Christian racists of the period could not bear the idea of their Messiah being a Jew. He wrote these excerpts to make Germany aware of what he . how quickly does holly grow. Oktober 1923, quoted in Stackelberg, Roderick, Winkle, Sally. As they wanted to destroy anything that was not Jewish, they fought against the Greeks. . To prove the excellence of Germanic blood, scientists and race specialists had argued, since the 1830s, that every light came from the North, and not from the East. For "the most sacred of duties . Educated at Versailles, Geneva, and Vienna, Chamberlain became an admirer of Richard Wagner, publishing his first work, Notes sur Lohengrin (Notes on Lohengrin), in 1892. . Jahrhunderts, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005. Beck, 1999, 534p. NF, Beat, Von Perikles zu Hitler? The book goes into a lot of analysis to explain what the tuetonic race is the greatest race the world has ever been give and has merged into many other races at the same time also. However, it was quite successful from the 1900s to the 1930s; it sold over 200000 copies. . Later, the Wagner family would welcome another subject of the British Empire: Winifred Williams. As a true Wagnerian, Chamberlain needed heroes and saviours. "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century". En 1899, ses Fondements du 19me sicle le font connatre dun vaste public: il y relit la totalit de lhistoire de loccident au prisme de la race et du ncessaire avnement de la puissance germanique. Houston Stewart Chamberlain - The German WorldviewAlexander Jacob - with Pedro VarelaLibreria Europa, Barcelona, 2007https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780761829126/Po. Chamberlain could very well have been a poor mans Hegel: rewriting the history of civilization in a less than talented way, apologizing for not being able to elaborate further on what he was talking about because it would take too long and writing much nonsense on the science of the time which he was already busy repudiating. He then joined the Nazi party before he passed away in 1927. Greetings to you, spiritual father. He then joined the Nazi party before he passed away in 1927. You are not at all, as you have been described to me, a fanatic. A true anti-Semite, Wagner wrote an essay against the perversion of the arts by the Jews entitled Jewishness in Music (Das Judentum in der Musik1) that led Friedrich Nietzsche to break with him but that gained him the affection of many dubious devotees. 14 Ohne Rom, das ist sicher, wre Europa eine blosse Fortsetzung des asiatischen Chaos geblieben. Those three cities had been, throughout the 19. century, the epitome of Western culture: the Greeks had bequeathed philosophy and the arts, the Romans the Law and the Empire, and Jerusalem had opened a new path to salvation with the teachings of Jesus Christ. 27 Sie haben Gewaltiges zu leisten vor sich, aber trotz Ihrer Willenskraft halte ich Sie nicht fr einen Gewaltmenschen. It was high time the saviour appeared. Broken, mumbling, tears in his eyes. 10, p.153. 10 Diese Anschauung von der Bedeutung der Kunst entspricht auch, wenn ich nicht irre, einer spezifischen Anlage des deutschen Geistes. He holds my hand and won't let me go. The Teutonic warrior is therefore celebrated by Chamberlains book with the same resonating fury as Wagners operas: Ohne ihn ging der Tag des Indoeuropers zu Ende. His two-volume book Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, whose title translates from the original German as The Foundations Of The Nineteenth . This idea was borrowed by Chamberlain from many racist historians and theoreticians of the time. For many people in the 19th century, it was a vital question19: many Christian racists of the period could not bear the idea of their Messiah being a Jew. Now I believe I understand that it is precisely this that characterizes and defines your being: the true awakener is at the same time the bestower of peace25. After attending a, in Versailles and a boarding school in Cheltenham, he visited destination spas and various health resortshe did not have a very sound constitutionwith his chaperon and a tutor. Historians must therefore make the effort to understand that, for Chamberlain's coevals, his book was important in that it provided an answer, at the time, to important questions and, to a larger extent, tried to give a meaning to history. Die athenische Demokratie und die deutsche Althistorie bis 1945, Peter Lang, Bern, New York, 1986, 332p. 9 Decultot, Elisabeth, Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone / Multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English-speaking world. If politicians had been more aware of his work, states would be far better off now, writes Hitler: Those who had the government of the country in their hands were quite as indifferent to principles of civil wisdom laid down by thinkers like H. S. Chamberlain as our political leaders now are. In Aryan Worldview Houston Chamberlain discusses the importance of Indology in the effort to gain deeper insight into the essence of Indo-European thought. As they wanted to destroy anything that was not Jewish, they fought against the Greeks. He became a member of the Wagner circle and grew quite intimate with the family of the, whose daughter, Eva, he ended up marrying. Was sagt man zu einer Geschichte, die mehr als 1200 Jahre umfasst, und nicht einen einzigen Philosophen aufweist, ja, nicht einmal das kleinste Philosphchen? Houston Stewart Chamberlain a fost un scriitor, sociolog i filosof englez; autor de cri despre filosofie politic. He spent his winters in Cannes and springs in Florence. of his time. 3This book has the reputation of being hard, if not impossible, to read. View all Houston Stewart Chamberlain Quotes. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (/ t e m b r l n /; 9 September 1855 - 9 January 1927) was a British-German philosopher who wrote works about political philosophy and natural science. The Europe the Romans had ambitioned was saved by a racial messiah: the Germanic tribes which, by invading the Empire, preserved the continent and its civilization. 6But what was to be said about Rome? Before praising the Romans for being good lawyers, he blames them for their lack of creativity: Can you find one single poetic genius among the Romans? As for Aristotle, he would not have been remembered in the same way had it not been for Plato. Thanks to this book, and because he was someone who mattered in Bayreuth, Chamberlain later became a very important mediator in the formulation of the Nazi ideology, before he died in 1927. Was der Chamberlain da in seinen Grundlagen geschrieben hat, ist gelinde gesagt dumm, Hitler quoted in Rauschning, Hermann, Gesprche mit Hitler, Wien, Zrich, New York, Europa Verlag, 1940, p.51. The fanatic wants to overwhelm people with words, you wish to convince, only to convince themand that is why you are successful. . The self-taught student had found his philosophical stone and was ready to share his revelation, to the public. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, (born Sept. 9, 1855, Southsea, Hampshire, Eng.died Jan. 9, 1927, Bayreuth, Ger. What were the problems caused by modernity and how could the world be improved for the sake of the better portionthe white portionof humanity? Houston Stewart Chamberlain was born in Southsea, England, on Sept. 9, 1855. Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Among them were Houston Stewart Chamberlain and many members of what historians later called the Bayreuther Kreis, an informal circle of members and friends of the Wagner family, including Cosima Wagner, the wife of the Master, and Ludwig Schemann. Like Hegel, Chamberlain praised the Greeks for inventing freedom and the key notion of personality: Over there, in Asia, in the East, no man had ever been a person. They settled down in Greece and Rome, enjoying the benefits of cultural photosynthesis, thanks to the sun and mild climate of the Mediterranean. with the celestial intelligence and inspiration of the Greeks. 2 Schemann, Ludwig, Die Rasse in den GeisteswissenschaftenBand II: Hauptepochen und Hauptvlker der Geschichte in ihrer Stellung zur Rasse, Munich, Lehmanns Verlag, 1930, 419p. 3 Puschner, Uwe, Die vlkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich. Writers like Arthur Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain derived an additional hierarchy, which gave white-skinned people an internal hierarchy. The son of a naval officerhis father was an admiral in the Royal Navy , he spent his whole youth travelling around Europe. Meuchelmrderisch hatte sich der asiatische und afrikanische Knecht bis zum Thron des rmischen Imperiums hinaufgeschlichen, inzwischen der syrische Bastard sich des Gesetzeswerkes bemchtigte, der Jude die Bibliothek zu Alexandria benutzte, um hellenische Philosophie dem mosaischen Gesetze anzupassen (). Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a social Darwinist and a true racist. houston stewart chamberlain, the importance of race summary. devotion baptism . Decultot, Elisabeth, Johann Joachim Winckelmann. 13 As a true Wagnerian, Chamberlain needed heroes and saviours. , New York, Columbia University Press, 1981, 565p. , Munich, Bruckmann, 1899, 1031p. (2 volumes). Athens was beautiful, but Greece was splendid: the people looked like statues, they had perfectly proportioned noses and marble skin, they spoke the language of books (written in Greek) and they invented not only mathematics but also the theatre and the art of warfare. Sie kennen Goethes Unterscheidung von Gewalt und Gewalt! . Jesus Christ was, strangely enough, of pure Germanic blood. I also examine Chamberlain's influence on Nazism and suggest that Johann Chapoutot. One of the most important features of Darwin's theory was his proposed mechanism for evolution: natural selection through the struggle for existence. The No surprise there, because, according to him, Christ was also a German. 1.7 Houston Stewart Chamberlain and the Race Struggle of Western History Like Theodor Fritsch, Houston Stewart Chamberlain represents an important link between He was the son of an English captain, later admiral. Summary With a . He was therefore read and admired by the major figures of the Nazi ideologyone of whom was Hitlerand became, just before he died, in the 1920s, one of the leading minds of their movement. This idea according to which the Greeks and the Germans shared the same taste for beauty had been a commonplace for, since Johann Winckelmann published, in 1764, his, In the words of Chamberlain: This assumption of the importance of the arts corresponds to a specific character of the German mind, if I am not mistaken, But what was to be said about Rome? Der Fanatiker will berreden, Sie wollen berzeugen, nur berzeugen, und darum gelingt es Ihnen auch; ja, ich mchte Sie ebenfalls fr das Gegenteil eines Politikers dieses Wort im landlufigen Sinne aufgefat erklren, denn die Asche aller Politik ist die Parteiangehrigkeit, whrend bei Ihnen alle Parteien verschwinden, aufgezehrt von der Glut der Vaterlandsliebe. By HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN. as sufficiently self-explanatory, despised Rosenbergs reflections which Goering himself went as far as to call a mere philosophical burp. But it also disappeared. (Houston Stewart Chamberlain, 1855 9 9 ~ 1927 1 9 ) , , . While their cousins who had stayed in the north still ate raw meat and lived in caverns, the Germans of the Souththat is to say, the Greeks and the Romansate healthy food and created civilisation. . Chamberlains theories owed much to the writings of Joseph Arthur, comte de Gobineau, who was the first to claim to prove the superiority of the Nordic race. 10, p.296, in the English translation by MURPHY, James, London, Hurst and Blackett, 1939, vol. 2 19 20 . Thanks to the Romans, the legions saved mankind from this plague: People have not stopped complaining about the destruction of Carthage, from Polybius to Mommsen! This beautiful race (in every regard) was dominant in Germany and Austria, but also within the elites of the British Empire and of the United States of America; it extended to the French elites as well, but only partly. 15The second Saviour (with a capital S) is Jesus Christ himself whom Chamberlain celebrates at length in his book. Drben, im asiatischen Osten, hatten und haben nicht einmal die Menschen Persnlichkeit, hier, in Hellas, ist jeder Fluss, jeder Stein belebt, individualisiert, die stumme Natur erwacht zum Bewusstsein ihrer selbst, in Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, Demandt, Alexander, Politische Aspekte im Alexanderbild der Neuzeit. Chamberlain could very well have been a poor mans Hegel: rewriting the history of civilization in a less than talented way, apologizing for not being able to elaborate further on what he was talking about because it would take too long and writing much nonsense on the science of the time which he was already busy repudiating.